Fitzsimon File

Every legislative session Senator David Hoyle introduces a bill calling for a constitutional amendment to limit the length of legislative sessions. They would be limited to 135 days in odd years and 60 days in even years.

The thought is that the limits will help preserve a “citizen legislature” in North Carolina. Preserve what? Does anybody, including Hoyle, really believe we have a citizen legislature now? With some exceptions, the majority of lawmakers are wealthy, retired, own a business, or work for a law firm that supports their legislative service.

A glance at the cars in the legislative parking lot makes it clear that the citizen legislature has been gone for a long time. Limiting sessions won’t help restore it. Do you have a job that allows you to be gone for 4 months one year and two months the next?

And isn’t passing good legislation and a fair, thoughtful budget more important than the number of days the General Assembly meets? There are a lot of problems with the legislative process, weak lobbying laws, the way campaigns are financed, the concentration of power in a few hands, but limiting sessions won’t address any of them and will only make life a little easier for the legislators already in office.

And of course, if lawmakers really want to get the state’s business done in 135 days, there is nothing preventing them from doing that now, without an amendment to the constitution.

State officials should work hard to improve the state’s economy, encourage businesses to expand and convince new companies to locate here. No one can argue with that, but every time economic development and incentives are up for debate, the discussion gets more and more troubling.

And there will be plenty of debate about it this session, as the William S. Lee Act is set to expire. Plans are already underway to replace the Lee Act with another incentive program. Leaders of North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry said this week they hope lawmakers will remove a current provision that requires business to pay wages above the county average to get tax credits. They described it as onerous.

The group also opposes efforts to make more documents involved in the incentive process open to the press. Can’t have that, the public actually knowing what state officials are doing with our tax dollars. Open government is as onerous as paying a decent wage.

The fingernails on the backboard quote of the week goes to Senator Ham Horton who was questioning a bill to give the General Assembly the authority to decide contested elections.

Horton’ comment was. “Let me suggest that we skin our eyes back and see this situation for what it really is.” Why can’t they just open their eyes?

Finally, the latest from the backward thinking tank world. This time, the anti-government folks are trying to convince us about the evils of the federal student aid program for kids going to college. That position pretty much speaks for itself. Not much explanation needed.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.